For immediate release: September 27, 2024

Contact: Jeanie Ward-Waller, legislative advocate for Transform, [email protected]. 401-241-8559

SACRAMENTO: Today, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Transportation Accountability Act, AB 2086, authored by Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo and co-sponsored by Transform and the Greenlining Institute. The bill will bring much-needed transparency to Caltrans spending and require Caltrans to provide a financial analysis of the California Transportation Plan. It will also require Caltrans to expand the project information publicly available through its online dashboard to relate spending to performance metrics.

“The Transportation Accountability Act is critical to ensuring that California’s transportation dollars are spent on projects that enhance mobility options while mitigating the climate crisis, especially for our most transportation-burdened communities. Decision makers can’t shift investment priorities without data on how those investments are benefiting or harming communities today,” says Jeanie Ward-Waller, legislative advocate for Transform and director of transportation advocacy at Fearless Advocacy.

California has an excellent framework for reducing emissions from transportation in the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI). However, our state transportation budget is incredibly complex, making it hard to understand how priorities influence spending. This enables Caltrans to make decisions with little public oversight and advance climate-killing highway projects. As Transform pointed out in a recent op-ed, the projects our state is funding with money from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA) will have a net negative effect on climate change. AB 2086 will provide much-needed sunlight into transportation funding decisions and the benefits that result from those investments.

The California Air Resources Board estimates that 50% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, and we must reduce driving by 25% by 2030 to be on track to meet our climate goals. The enhanced Caltrans dashboard mandated by this bill will allow advocates like Transform to connect California’s transportation expenditures to its climate goals and assess whether Caltrans is living up to its duty to serve all Californians and protect our communities.

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